Heading for the breakdown

Today, I took my first still photo gig since Mike died. It wasn’t much. Drive to a desolate mobile home near Guntersville, meet the wife of a man on death row (she met and married him 15 years AFTER he was convicted), take a photo of a photo of the happy couple during a prison visit and head back to B’ham.

That’s about the level of visual creativity I can deal with right now.

About forty-five minutes into the nearly two hour drive home, I had the brilliant idea to listen to some of Mike’s old bands’ music. I found myself trying to remember if this or that background vocal was Mike’s voice; I sang along with some of the songs, enjoyed his deft bass playing.

Then a song came on and I had the uncontrollable urge to scream my own crass and vulgar lyrics to the melody .

So I did.

Again and again and again. I screamed so loud, I thought I was going to blow out my vocal cords. Crying and screaming until I ran out of tissue and was dying of thirst.

So I stopped at a Chevron in Boaz to buy water, a vitamin drink and some toilet tissue (no Kleenex for sale there). I think I qualified as being hysterical at that point.

The clerk tried to say something like “things can’t be that bad”, but I told him it was that bad and worse; my husband is dead. He apologized and I walked out the door, thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that I ought to feel humiliated for behaving this way. But I didn’t.

As I started my car, a man came running out of the store and asked if I would please come into the back room, have a seat, and try to calm down before driving again.

So I followed him back into the store, sat on an upside down bucket in the back room while he stood there quietly. He told me his name was LeWayne. He wore a blue oxford shirt with a Cook’s Pest Control logo on it. He said he was a friend of the guy who was running the register. Or maybe the owner–I don’t quite recall.

All the while I cried. He kept saying how young and pretty I was and that I had so much more of my life ahead of me to look forward to. All I could think of was “yes, way too long.”

Finally, I did calm down. I told him about my assignment up in G’ville and about my kids. About Mike.

Then he gave me a hug, and I drove home, numb. I put away the CD and tuned into NPR without hearing or caring about the day’s news.

Maybe if I can scream like that about a million more times, I’ll feel better.

But I’ll stick to playing Mike’s CD at home for now. And I’ll keep the windows closed while I sing.

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